Norms or rationality? : The rescue of jews, electoral participation, and educational decisions

In sociology it has been much debated whether the normativist-culturalist or the rational choice perspective better explains social phenomena. Since each has received considerable empirical support, an integrated account of norms and rationality is much needed. The Model of Frame Selection offers such an integration. In this model, cost-benefit calculus is replaced by unconditional norm conformity if norms are strongly internalized. We test this proposition in three fields of application: the rescue of Jews in WWII, electoral participation, and the decision among secondary school tracks. In line with the predictions of the Model of Frame Selection we find that strong helping norms, intense norms of civic duty, and high educational aspirations lead actors to disregard the risk of helping Jews, the incentive to express political preferences, and the prospects to complete school tracks

Does the Pandemic Affect Inequality Within Families? The Case of Dual-Earner Couples in Israel

This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid housework but did change the distribution of childcare. The theoretical implications of this conclusion for future research are discussed

The intragenerational mobility of the top income earners during financial crises, a story of a cohort

Published online: 22 August 2023In this study, we explore the dynamics of the intragenerational mobility of the top income earners during financial crises. We analyze panel data on the income levels of a cohort consisting of 22,601 individuals in Israel born between 1963 and 1973, for the period between 1995 and 2013. Studying a specific cohort allows us to focus on the changes caused by period effects, rather than cohort replacement distortions. We use common intragenerational mobility measurements before, during, and after two major recessions- the Dot.com crisis and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008- which occurred during the analyzed period. However, since these are usually descriptive, we adopt a methodology that enables us to calculate confidence intervals of these measurements and thus test for changes over time. Our results show if the two crises had any effect on the intragenerational mobility of the top income earners of the analyzed cohort, it was a minor and transitory effect.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Elsevier Transformative Agreement (2023-2027)

Theoretical Principles of Single-Molecule Electronics: A Chemical and Mesoscopic View

Exploring the use of individual molecules as active components in electronic devices has been at the forefront of nanoelectronics research in recent years. Compared to semiconductor microelectronics, modeling transport in single-molecule devices is much more difficult due to the necessity of including the effects of the device electronic structure and the interface to the external contacts at the microscopic level. Theoretical formulation of the problem therefore requires integrating the knowledge base in surface science, electronic structure theory, quantum transport and device modeling into a single unified framework starting from the first-principles. In this paper, we introduce the theoretical framework for modeling single-molecule electronics and present a simple conceptual picture for interpreting the results of numerical computation. We model the device using a self-consistent matrix Green's function method that combines Non-Equilibrium Green's function theory of quantum transport with atomic-scale description of the device electronic structure. We view the single-molecule device as "heterostructures" composed of chemically well-defined atomic groups, and analyze the device characteristics in terms of the charge and potential response of these atomic groups to perturbation induced by the metal-molecule coupling and the applied bias voltage. We demonstrate the power of this approach using as examples devices formed by attaching benzene-based molecules of different size and internal structure to the gold electrodes through sulfur end atoms.Comment: To appear in International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, Special Issue in memory of J.A. Pople. 13 pages, 9 figure

The Parallel Magnetoconductance of Interacting Electrons in a Two Dimensional Disordered System

The transport properties of interacting electrons for which the spin degree of freedom is taken into account are numerically studied for small two dimensional diffusive clusters. On-site electron-electron interactions tend to delocalize the electrons, while long-range interactions enhance localization. On careful examination of the transport properties, we reach the conclusion that it does not show a two dimensional metal insulator transition driven by interactions. A parallel magnetic field leads to enhanced resistivity, which saturates once the electrons become fully spin polarized. The strength of the magnetic field for which the resistivity saturates decreases as electron density goes down. Thus, the numerical calculations capture some of the features seen in recent experimental measurements of parallel magnetoconductance.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Singular Fermi Liquids

An introductory survey of the theoretical ideas and calculations and the experimental results which depart from Landau Fermi-liquids is presented. Common themes and possible routes to the singularities leading to the breakdown of Landau Fermi liquids are categorized following an elementary discussion of the theory. Soluble examples of Singular Fermi liquids (often called Non-Fermi liquids) include models of impurities in metals with special symmetries and one-dimensional interacting fermions. A review of these is followed by a discussion of Singular Fermi liquids in a wide variety of experimental situations and theoretical models. These include the effects of low-energy collective fluctuations, gauge fields due either to symmetries in the hamiltonian or possible dynamically generated symmetries, fluctuations around quantum critical points, the normal state of high temperature superconductors and the two-dimensional metallic state. For the last three systems, the principal experimental results are summarized and the outstanding theoretical issues highlighted.Comment: 170 pages; submitted to Physics Reports; a single pdf file with high quality figures is available from http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloo

Metallic behavior and related phenomena in two dimensions

For about twenty years, it has been the prevailing view that there can be no metallic state or metal-insulator transition in two dimensions in zero magnetic field. In the last several years, however, unusual behavior suggestive of such a transition has been reported in a variety of dilute two-dimensional electron and hole systems. The physics behind these observations is presently not understood. We review and discuss the main experimental findings and suggested theoretical models.Comment: To be published in Rev. Mod. Phy